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Monday April 22, 2013 8:18 AM

BRASILIA, Brazil — A Brazilian court sentenced 23 police officers yesterday to 156 years in
prison each for killing 13 inmates in Brazil’s bloodiest prison revolt, in which 111 inmates died
more than 20 years ago.

Military police stormed Sao Paulo’s Carandiru prison in 1992 to quell a riot sparked by a fight
between two rival gangs that started with a quarrel during a soccer game.

Prosecutors said police officers brutally repressed the uprising by shooting 102 prisoners,
sometimes at point-blank range. Nine other inmates are thought to have been killed with knives in
the fight between prisoners.

The conviction of police officers is unusual in Brazil, and the tough sentences handed down to
those involved in the prison massacre was a new sign of the judiciary holding authorities
accountable for breaking the law. Last year, in an unprecedented case, the Supreme Court convicted
several top ruling-party politicians of corruption.

The Carandiru massacre shocked Brazilians and exposed the awful conditions in Brazilian prisons.
It became the subject of a hit 2003 film.

The prosecution’s main witness was the former deputy director of the prison, Moacir dos Santos,
who told the court that the military police “executed” the prisoners, many of them in their cells,
even those who had surrendered and were naked.

“I saw a carpet of bodies,” Santos said during the six-day trial. He said police went in
machine-gunning inmates, and officers outside cheered after the first wave of shootings.

Defense lawyers argued that the police acted in self-defense when attacked by inmates trying to
escape from the prison, Brazil’s largest and most-notorious penitentiary.

The officer who commanded the operation, Col. Ubiratan Guimaraes, was sentenced to 632 years in
prison for his role in the massacre, but the conviction was tossed when a mistrial was declared in
2006. Months later, he was found dead in his apartment from a gunshot to the abdomen.